Free Eden by Keary Taylor Page B

the
building.
    He only nodded as he
stared wide-eyed back at me.
    I looked around the
corner, keeping my body pressed to the cool surface of the side of
the building.  I caught sight of a woman walking in the
opposite direction of us.  Only half her head was covered with
red hair that trailed to her waist.  The other half of her
head was shiny metal.  I noticed her left hand had no flesh,
only a cybernetic skeletal frame of fingers poked out of her long
sleeved shirt.
    I glanced at West, pressed
a finger to my lips, then motioned for him to follow me.  We
both sprinted silently across the street.
    There was only one block
to go.  I could see the pharmacy when something inside the
bottom floor of a sky scraper caught my eye.  I froze with
stunned horror.
    They were there, just as
West told me they would be.  Rows of Fallen inside the
building, facing the windows, watching with inactive eyes. 
There were children with cybernetic legs, women with half faces,
men with bare metallic chests.  And they were just standing
there inside.  Waiting.
    “ Eve, come on,” a voice
said urgently as it tugged on my arm.  I had been pulled ten
steps away before I managed to take my eyes off of them.
    “ Why are they like that?”
I asked, panic filling my voice.  How had I not ever noticed
them like that before?  “What are they waiting
for?”
    “ Let’s not find out,” he
said as he checked to make sure we were clear before we crossed the
street.  He grabbed my wrist and dragged me across.
    I finally snapped out of
it as we stepped through the large broken window.  We went to
the fridge first this time.  The electricity was still working
in this building as well.
    “ Here we go,” West
said.  “Four… five… six.  There’s six of them
here.”
    “ Great,” I said as I
wrapped them with the others.  I stuffed the shirt back in my
bag and set it down on the ground as I went to scour the
shelves.  “That’s got to be enough.  I don’t think we’ll
have to go to the other pharmacy.  We probably couldn’t make
it anyway with it getting this light.  It’s across the
city.  Six or seven miles.”
    There were bottles and
bottles of aspirin, cases of allergy medication I hoped would help
Sarah.  There was probably something here for seizures as
well, but I wouldn’t know what it was. 
    “ Does it smell funny in
here to you?” I asked as I followed the source of the strange
scent.
    “ Just like an old
abandoned building with breaking down chemicals,” he said as he
stuffed his pack full of life-saving medication.
    I wandered to the back of
the building, into a utility room.  A rusty looking water
heater dominated the cramped space.  Electric cables and lines
ran in different directions, disappearing into the wall.  This
was where the smell was coming from.
    A movement caught my eye
outside the small window to my left.  By then it was too
late.
    The glass shattered as the
Hunter outside fired.  The bullet brushed past my left
shoulder, embedding itself into the thick metal side of the water
heater.  The spark of metal was small, and it wasn’t a heavy
gas leak, but it was enough to cause the explosion.
    “ West!” I screamed as I
ducked as the flames billowed out at me.  “Get out of
here!”
    I could feel the oxygen
being quickly sucked out of the building as the flames ate it
up.  I scrambled along the floor toward my pack.  I
couldn’t leave it here.  It was the whole reason we had
come.
    “ Eve?!” I heard his
screaming toward the front of the building.
    “ Run!” I screamed as I
came to his side, grabbed his hand in mine, and bolted out the
door.
    By this time the sun had
broken over the buildings and the morning rays were charging the
enemy.  I heard the rev of an engine come from behind the
building and the screeching of tires against
asphalt. 
    We were only two blocks
away from where the forest butted up against the city but we
weren’t as fast as an ATV.
    The hunter shot